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by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Computer Maintenance But in the Sorta Sexy Kinda Way, F/F, Wire Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 03:17:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19967161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “You’ll be fine,” Luna assures her.“I sure hope so,” Cindy murmurs. Luna feels her hands pause at the laced backing of her dress. “Um.”“Is there a problem?”“Oh! No, there’s no problem. Just...gonna have to get you undressed before I can get into the main ports. That okay with ya?”“Of course,” Luna answers. Shedidcome here for maintenance, after all.(Another kinkmeme fill)





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**Author's Note:**

> For the [prompt](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5690.html?thread=11631674#cmt11631674):
> 
> When the Oracle died in Somnus' time, she left no descendants, so the gods created an artificial human to take on her role. For centuries, the Fleurets have been a mix of android oracles and their human companions/'siblings,' but when the empire took over, Ravus hadn't learned enough to help Luna, the latest android of the Oracle line, with maintenance or repair.
> 
> So by the time she escapes the ruin of Insomnia, Luna is quietly dealing with a number of small, potentially dangerous malfunctions.
> 
> Good thing there's an enterprising mechanic in Hammerhead to help her out, right?

**IRREGULAR BEHAVIOR DETECTED IN COMPONENT NO. H09-045. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR.**

**CRITICAL MALFUNCTION IN PORT NO. 02-005. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR IMMEDIATELY.**

**CRITICAL MALFUNCTION IN PORT NO. 02-007. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR IMMEDIATELY.**

**CORE TEMPERATURE ABOVE NORMAL LEVELS. PLEASE WAIT APPROXIMATELY 60 MINUTES BEFORE RETURNING TO ACTIVITY.**

Oracle Model no. 114 LUNAFREYA – Luna, unofficially – blinks away the errors. Her vision clears for only a few moments before they return, and she sighs.

She’s been walking for thirty-four hours and twelve minutes. Leide is mostly desert, and towns are rare; the area had been at the forefront of the Great War and never recovered, only the hollow ruins of old buildings dotting the landscape between Insomnia’s southern gates and the border crossing.

She drags herself past the magitek guards posted at the entrance; she’d entrusted the Ring of the Lucii to the two kingsglaive who’d helped her escape, and Niflheim had drawn their focus away from her for the time being. The machines let her pass right by them without even a twitch.

The empire would come for her again soon enough. The gods began the Oracle Project two thousand years ago in anticipation of the weeks to come. A millennia of androids powered by increasingly modern technology and the crystal’s magic, all leading up to the one Oracle who would be alive during the time of the Chosen King, the one who would finally wake the gods from their slumber.

**CRITICAL MALFUNCTION IN PORT NO. 02-005. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR IMMEDIATELY.**

...Waking the gods will have to wait until she gets those sorted out, of course.

The sun is low on the horizon when Luna finally drags herself into a crowded rest stop; her error messages no longer accept her dismissals even for a minute, and the constant blaring is making her head ache. She walks into the diner, plops herself down by the closest empty outlet, and pulls a cord from her wrist.

Luna looks around; the diner is full for this time of night, people stopping by for one more meal before darkness settles across the desert. There’s several tourists lingering around on the way to Galdin Quay, a few families. A woman in a yellow jacket sits at the counter, talking to the owner. A small cluster of hunters dressed in black getting ready to set out for the night’s watch. Luna’s always liked being around people, even more than she’s designed to be; she needs to be outgoing, of course, as the Oracle, but she likes to _know_ things about the people she meets, the people she heals. She likes to hear who they are before they had need to come to her. Even moreso than knowing, it’s a comfort to be around people. Her old operator never paid her much attention, and she has to admit it felt a little lonely at times.

**IRREGULAR BEHAVIOR DETECTED IN COMPONENT NO. H09-045. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR.**

Error messages flash across her screen again. Luna shuffles with the outlet; it’s a little loose, and the cord refuses to connect. She huffs in frustration.

“Oh! Hold up one sec, Takka, I gotta talk to someone for jus’ a minute.”

Luna looks up; it’s the woman in the yellow jacket. She slides into the booth across from her.

“Sorry for interrupting, ma’am, but I was just wonderin’ if you needed any help.”

“...I’m all right, thank you.”

The woman clicks her tongue.

“Doesn’t seem like it – I can hear you beeping from over there.”

Luna frowns. “I don’t... _beep.”_

“Well. Not literally, of course,” the woman says, “but you sure do look like you need some fixin’ up, now that I can look at you. Lookit your eyes – they’re almost flashlights, the way those messages are poppin’ up.”

Luna blinks. The messages don’t clear. _Of course._

“I’m not like the Crown City androids,” she says quickly, before the woman can offer the inevitable help. “I’m a…a custom model.”

“Pffft,” The woman says. “Paw-paw was able to fix your old self right up back in the day, apparently. He probably still has some of the old books layin’ around.”

“My old self?”

The woman nods at the door. “SYLVA. Never met her, of course, but you look almost exactly like her. I’m sure it’s the same, hm?”

Luna isn’t sure how to respond. _Why does a woman so far outside Tenebrae, outside Insomnia, know how to fix Oracles? What’s...a paw-paw?_

“Oh!” The woman says, jumping to her feet; she holds out her hand. “Sorry. Got too excited for a second. I’m Cindy. My grandpa Cid owns the garage.”

Cindy shuts the garage door behind her; there’s only one car in the building, a vintage black luxury car that looks rather out of place among the rust and dirt accumulated in the garage through years of constant work.

“A beauty, ain’t she?” Cindy says, admiring it for a moment. Luna has no comment – a car’s a car to her. “A group of fellas dropped her off for some remodels. I think they’re off helping the hunters tonight, so it’ll be here ‘til mornin’.”

Cindy kicks a cart in front of the license plate. Luna can tell it belongs to Prince Noctis without even checking; the Regalia is a _little_ bit infamous. Or, rather, the boy had chattered to her excitedly twelve years ago about his father’s “really cool car!”. The prince is reported dead – for the best for the time being, if Luna’s honest. It’ll give him time to lay low before heading off to Altissia.

**CRITICAL MALFUNCTION IN PORT NO. 02-007. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR OPERATOR IMMEDIATELY.**

Where she should be headed now, if her error messages would just _go away for a minute._

Cindy rummages through a filing cabinet; the handle is heavy with dust, untouched for a long time. “Paw-paw’s gone off for the night as well, so we’ll be alone. I hope that’s fine?”

Luna shrugs. “I don’t need a chaperone.”

The human previously tasked with taking care of her, Ravus Nox Fleuret, had shoved her in her room and mostly left her to fend for herself before the trip to Insomnia. Although he’d tried to maintain her for years after the attack, he was quickly admitted a spot in the Niflheim army, and without much knowledge of how to repair her, he’d left her alone to her Oracle duties more often than not.

She hasn’t needed a chaperone in quite some time.

Cindy snorts and keeps digging through the cabinet. She lets out a little whoop when she finds what she’s looking for; an old binder stuffed thick with paper.

“You keep them on paper?” Luna asks, a little incredulously; the Oracle manual has been online for at _least_ the past five hundred years.

“This is just the emergency stuff,” Cindy says, a little apologetic. “Paw-paw was only traveling with Sylva for a bit, y’see, and you know how it is with the security stuff. He kept this stuff just in case, though.”

The Oracle manuals are highly confidential. Luna frowns. “Cid stole them?”

Cindy laughs. “Not ‘steal’, more like...copied? They’re all scanned right off the tablet. Said he’d be damned if he didn’t have at least the basic stuff on hand.”

Luna makes a mental note to someday meet this ‘paw-paw’ of Cindy’s.

Cindy pulls open the binder and clicks her tongue. “Right. So, what’s the major stuff?”

Luna straightens up. “Currently, port two is experiencing critical malfunctions. Five and seven require immediate attention.”

Cindy blinks.

“Uh...sure. Ya don’t have to be so clinical about it, it’s okay. I gotcha.”

Luna shrugs. It’s better for her to be clear, lest something go wrong. Cindy places the binder onto the cart she’d shoved by the car and pats an open bench.

“All right, hop up here.”

Luna takes a seat on the bench. Cindy brushes Luna’s hair away from her neck; her hands are warm. “I know you said you aren’t a Crown City model, but I’m guessing the same basic setup?”

“Yes. I believe Lucis modeled their own androids after the Oracles, anyway.”

“Neat,” Cindy says. “I used to work on old ones, but I’m afraid they don’t show up much outside the city. Ain’t had very much practice.”

“You’ll be fine,” Luna assures her.

“I sure hope so,” Cindy murmurs. Luna feels her hands pause at the laced backing of her dress. “Um.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Oh! No, there’s no problem. Just...gonna have to get you undressed before I can get into the main ports. That okay with ya?”

“Of course,” Luna answers. She _did_ come here for maintenance, after all.

Cindy gently unties the lace shawl covering her shoulders; most of it is scorched away, but Cindy handles it as delicately as if it were brand new. Luna lifts her arms to help her ease it off her.

“I’m gonna have to get at least the top half’a your dress undone, too. Still good?”

“Yes.”

She feels Cindy fumble with the ties in the back of her dress, more unsteady now. She doesn’t seem to be the type to wear fancy clothing, and it _is_ a little bit of a complex outfit, so Luna stands up and cranes her neck to look at it, working at the ties herself. None of her errors seem like they’d require her fully bare, so she tugs the dress down over her chest and lets it drape around her hips. She sits back down onto the bench, back facing Cindy again. She hears the woman swallow.

“Uh. Yeah! All right. Let’s keep the show rollin’.”

Cindy’s hands press in gently at the small of her back, clicking open an invisible panel with a small hissing sound. She feels her hands reach carefully around the interior wiring; it’s a little bit of an odd sensation, having someone poking around in there, and Luna arches her back a bit at the feeling.

“Sorry,” she says when Cindy freezes in place. “it just...feels a little strange.”

Cindy chuckles.

“I bet. They _really_ weren’t keepin’ ya in the best of shape over there in Tenebrae, huh?”

“Mmn. No. I’ve honestly never had the need for in depth repairs until now.”

The unspoken reason for all her errors and repairs, the shadow of Insomnia’s invasion over them, has them both fall into silence. Cindy pokes and prods around for a little bit more, and Luna manages to keep herself in check this time. The sensation is still incredibly strange; Luna is used to trying most of this herself with little success, and giving someone access to her most vulnerable machinery, a stranger, is a little thrilling. With a nod, Cindy closes the panel. Two of the warnings disappear, and Luna feels something almost _click_ back into its correct position. She sighs in relief.

“Better?”

“Much,” Luna says, leaning back a little on the bench and stretching. Cindy folds down the page.

“Good thing I started with ‘em,” she murmurs. “Looks like those could’a caused a whole systems shutdown if ya let ‘em go for too long.”

Luna sits patiently, still half dressed, while Cindy looks up the next of her errors. The woman has gone awfully silent through all this; she seemed much more talkative in the diner, but when Luna turns to look at her, Cindy dives right back into looking through the book, her cheeks pink. Maybe she’s nervous about messing something up.

“Ah, darn,” Cindy says after some searching. “I don’t have anything for an H09.”

“H09 is my neck,” Luna says, rubbing her hand along it. “Similar to the nervous system.”

Cindy frowns.

“Dunno if I should be diggin’ around in your _nervous system_ without any kind of instruction.”

“It’s likely just something shifted out of place,” Luna says. “It’s not like the others – it wouldn’t cause any sort of shutdown. I can probably guide you through it, if you like?”  
“Sure you couldn’t just do this all yourself, darlin’?”

Luna shakes her head with a small smile. “I _do_ only have two eyes and two arms.”

“Huh! Wonder what all this is back here, then…?”

They dissolve into giggles. Cindy closes the manual and sets it aside. She sits down on the bench next to Luna; Luna notices her face is still red. So much time outside working on cars, perhaps – she has a bit of a sunburn. Freckles dot her cheeks, and she’s quite tan from being out in the sun. Her eyes are a pretty green; Luna meets her stare for only a moment before Cindy breaks eye contact, looks over her shoulder instead.

“Okay. Turn around, and then we can fix this one right up. Ya said that was the last of the important ones?”

“Mm. The rest I believe I can handle myself with some rest, thank you.”

“Sure thing.”

Cindy traces her hands over the back of her neck. Luna goes still at the sudden contact. “I don’t see anything...?”

“Here,” Luna says, placing her hand over hers. Manipulating her fingers into the correct places, she has Cindy press down firmly with two; a small whine, and the panel opens. “I believe you’re looking for a loose or detached cable. 045 should be a thin, yellow one.”

“Hold on a sec,” Cindy says. She returns a minute later with a flashlight. “Okay. Yellow..yellow...ah! Think I got the lil bugger.”

She reaches carefully into the open port with two fingers, carefully nudging apart other cables in the way.

The sensation is _different._ Luna hears herself whine as Cindy keeps them held apart.

“You all right there?” Cindy asks her. Luna nods quickly.

“I...I’m okay. Just keep going.”

It’s like she can _see_ what Cindy is doing back there; her warm hands keeping her inner wiring spread apart, her fingers digging for the loose cable. Her thumb brushes the same spot again, accidentally harder this time.

“ _Ah!”_

They both freeze; that wasn’t exactly a quiet sound. Luna hears Cindy drop the flashlight.

“Crap! Shoot. Sorry, I-”

“N-no,” Luna says, shifting on the bench. “That’s fine. It’s just...um. Sensitive.”

Cindy tries to pull her hand back. “Maybe I should just leave it for paw-paw to come back to in the morni-”

“No!” Luna blurts out. She feels her face grow warm. “I mean. No. You’re okay. Almost have it. Just keep going.”

Cindy clicks her tongue and holds still. Neither speak for a minute. Cindy takes a deep breath and picks the flashlight up off of the ground. Holding it carefully in one hand, she goes back to her work.

Luna has to _fight_ to keep herself quiet; whatever the other girl is doing back there, it feels _good –_ small and sudden bursts of stimulation directly into her wiring, like little static shocks, but more pleasant. Her H09 port is a thick cluster of wires, and every time Cindy touches one that isn’t the dislocated cable Luna bites back a tiny noise. Cindy has to hear her this close; Luna can feel her breathing on the back of her neck as she digs around.

Her hands are warm, but not soft; years of work has them calloused, and she can _feel_ them as she digs. The thought suddenly jumps into her head of what those hands would feel like elsewhere. Elsewhere, or hell, even just _there,_ pulling and grabbing at her wiring with _intent_ instead of just innocent, accidental touches. She tries her hardest to smash the thoughts out of mind, at least while the girl is still sitting behind her.

Cindy leans forward, her thigh brushing against Luna’s side, and Luna grabs onto it to keep herself steady. Cindy’s breath catches in her throat.

“I think I’ve got it,” Cindy says. Luna feels Cindy tug on the wire and click it back into place

Luna squeaks a small “ _Oh!_ ” at the cable reconnecting. The H09-045 warning vanishes immediately, leaving only her temperature readings behind.

**CORE TEMPERATURE ABOVE NORMAL LEVELS. PLEASE WAIT APPROXIMATELY 60 MINUTES BEFORE RETURNING TO ACTIVITY.**

That one Luna can handle herself.

Probably.

She needs a few minutes.

“It’s good now,” Luna says. Her own voice sounds a little weak. _Oops_ _._ “Thank you.”

“Huh-uh,” Cindy says. She leans away from Luna, and the Oracle didn’t even notice that she was nearly pressed right up against her back that whole time.

Her hand is still in Luna’s neck.

Cindy is careful not to pull at anything too roughly as she drags her fingers back out. Slowly, too slowly, trying hard not to push anything back out of place. Luna lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as she pulls her fingers free.

“Thank you for your help,” Luna says. She doesn’t need to breathe, exactly, but she feels breathless nonetheless. “Um. I suppose I can rent a camper for the night. I shouldn’t walk because of...daemons.”

Not because her legs feel like gelatin or anything.

Cindy pauses with her fingers at Luna’s neck. “Yeah. Camper.”

Luna stands up too-quickly and tries to redress herself. Cindy stands up quickly.

“Here, I can help you.”

Her hands are trembling a little as they fasten the back of her dress, carefully smoothing the fabric back into place. Luna holds her hair out of the way as she does up the ties close to where she was just touching her neck, Cindy’s hands moving feather-light over her skin.

“Ya don’t have to rent the camper for the night if you don’t want,” Cindy suddenly blurts out. Luna turns around; Cindy nervously rubs the back of her head. “Uh. I got a spare air mattress in my room at me and paw-paw’s apartment, and, um, if you wanna get a little more cozy. Not get cozy! I mean. Get a little more comfortable?”  
Cindy’s face is _bright red._

“Not comfortable like that, comfortable like. Sleepin’. Comfy. Spare bed. Um.”

Luna laughs.


End file.
